Ivan's Angle: Sunday 24th September - Bristol Commercial House League Round 2

I missed the first round of this 6 round league due to travelling back from Ireland. The Team had done well winning the B Div plus had the individual winner and 2 section wins. 9 Teams in the league this year, 5 in A Div and 4 in B Div. The bottom team in A Div gets demoted and the top in B Div gains promotion at the end of the series. Its a 6 aside team event so 54 anglers in total.
I had to travel to London in a hire van Friday evening to stay with my youngest daughter and then move her to her new place in Harrow on the Saturday. I did get home around 8 p.m on the Saturday but was knackered.
It was up early to meet Leigh at the Clevedon junction on the M5 and he would follow me down to the draw venue in Puriton just outside Bridgwater.
Team Captain Chris just got back from Ireland the previous evening so he had a busy night switching his gear around and doing some prep.
Other team members fishing were..
Glenn, Jack, Leigh, Steve and myself.

Not many of the anglers in this league fish the King Sedgemoor Drain (KSD) but there was a match on the stretch we were fishing a couple of Sundays ago and it appeared to fish well with 25kg of bream winning it and good backing weights of between 5kg and 12kg.
I myself have only fished it twice and not done very well.

Nicola and Mike Goodhind with the help of Vince Lunn do a tremendous job organising the league but enlisted the help of Paul Purchase to peg the match out and close the sections off.

There was only 2 access points and Paul provided postcodes

Chris drew us peg 1 and I was in D section. Jack was in E so he put in the postcode to his phone and I followed him down to Bradney Bridge where there was plenty of parking.

So and 18 peg walk for me which was nice and easy, no fences and all on a flat path. As I got near my peg a couple of the other anglers who were already on their pegs said mine looked nice but it was covered in duck weed which had become stationary up against a big willow going out a third of the way across.

It did look like a lawn and it took me a good 30 minutes to clear it with my landing net and using the landing net telescopic style in the pole.

The ''all in'' was at 10:30 and I was just about ready in time.

It was top 4 deep and 13 meters so had a set up to cover this with a 5 elastic and 1.5 gram float, just under top 4 deep at 11 meters so had a similar rig and at 9 meters beside the edge of the tree top 3 deep. I had an 8 elastic for this with a 15 hook as I intended to just feed chopped worm here looking for a big perch or a tench. A feeder rod was also set up just in case.

3 big balls of Noire and black lake went in at the start on the 13 metre line and a big pot of chopped worm by the tree.

It didn't take long to get my first bite down the middle, a decent rudd of around 6 ozs. The first hour was going swimmingly with a fish a chuck and then the pike moved in. What a nightmare, they were almost jumping out of the water as I lifted the fish out too early than I would have liked dropping quite a few off as I could see the shadow of the pike coming behind them. Peg D2 was also having trouble.

I fed the middle again and went over the worm line but only had a small perch after 20 minutes.

When I went out in the middle again it was still fairly productive and decided to put in a half a cup of chopped worm. This brought some small skimmers on the feed along with a few hybrids, not big but worth having. At around 13:00 I bumped a good fish, could have been a big perch or a bream but I will never know, the elastic came out quite a bit for 10 seconds. Half an hour later I bumped another so stepped up to a 16 hook. I did not get any big fish but 3 skimmers around 12oz were very welcome.

In hindsight I should have fished the whip, was going to set one up but didn't have time, then again if I took time out during the match or started later I would have done better.

Kevin Boltz and Mike Withy came up with the scales and I weighed 11lb 15oz.

A nice net of fish which anyone would be happy with.

This weight was the worst in B Div section would you believe and well done in the overall section.

Look at these for weights from D Section........

I packed up and walked down to Jack in E section, he had done well weighing 16lb odd and won his section.

Back at the results the Team Scorecard was looking good even with my 1 point. Jack had the maximum 4 points and the other guys had 3 points each giving us 17 points. I was confident that would be good enough.